commerce

Some few years back cross-boundary/country remittances/ payment did not exist in any of the African countries. But currently, according to Christabel Ligami a journalist for East African Newspaper, countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and South Sudan have adopted the cross-country money transfer via mobile money which was introduced by their central banks and communication commissions to help boost trading.

This initiative has seen some telcos already partnering in the move but at a higher rate which are likely to come down because other telcos are moving into the industry as well.

Vodaphone which owns 40% of Safaricom, signed a deal in April 2015 which gives M-Pesa customers access to seven African countries for mobile money transfers.

Earlier 2015, London-based Vodafone Group and South Africa’s MTN Group had also signed a deal that allowed their customers in East and Central Africa to transfer money to each other.

Millicom also announced it would allow its customers in Tanzania and Rwanda to send money to one another, says Christabel Ligami.

Also according to News Ghana, MTN Rwanda has also pioneered cross-border mobile money remittances service between Rwanda and Kenya

Meanwhile, MTN Group partnered with other money transfer platforms to help their customers transfer money directly to their Mobile Money Wallets in Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.

Alix Murphy, Senior Mobile Analyst at WorldRemit says “For diaspora members sending money to friends and family back home in Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, Mobile Money is a real game-changer. In Uganda, Mobile Money has already overtaken cash pick-up and bank deposits as the preferred method to receive money. We expect this trend to continue as MTN’s Mobile Money services reach millions of people without bank accounts, giving them access to a variety of life-enhancing financial services including savings and insurance schemes.”

Tigo customers in Rwanda now receive and send money via Tigo cash in Congo and vice versa to help make transfer easier for their customers. This is a partnership between Tigo Rwanda and Tigo DRC.

Failed requirements are one of the most common reasons of failed projects. In fact, the more of requirements are missed, the more expensive it is for organisations . EDEL Technology Consulting uses numerous methods to ensure that you as client never lose money because of incomplete requirements

The requirement gathering techniques may differ from one project to another. Some requirement gathering techniques may prove highly beneficial for you in one project but may not be as productive in the other project or for some other company. Therefore the usefulness of a technique is determined by its need and the kind of advantages it offers in a particular project. There are 10 essential requirement gathering techniques that you must be aware of in order to manage the projects in a better way and run your business successfully are:

Brainstorming

Document Analysis

Domain Analysis

Interface Analysis

Interview

Observation

Prototyping

Requirements Workshop

Reverse Engineering

Survey

We discuss some of them below

Interviews

Interviews are strong medium to collect requirements. Organization may conduct several types of interviews such as:

Structured (closed) interviews, where every single information to gather is decided in advance, they follow pattern and matter of discussion firmly.

Non-structured (open) interviews, where information to gather is not decided in advance, more flexible and less biased.

Oral interviews

Written interviews

One-to-one interviews which are held between two persons across the table.

Group interviews which are held between groups of participants. They help to uncover any missing requirement as numerous people are involved.

Surveys

Organization may conduct surveys among various stakeholders by querying about their expectation and requirements from the upcoming system.

Questionnaires

A document with pre-defined set of objective questions and respective options is handed over to all stakeholders to answer, which are collected and compiled.

A shortcoming of this technique is, if an option for some issue is not mentioned in the questionnaire, the issue might be left unattended.

Task analysis

Team of engineers and developers may analyze the operation for which the new system is required. If the client already has some software to perform certain operation, it is studied and requirements of proposed system are collected.

Domain Analysis

Every software falls into some domain category. The expert people in the domain can be a great help to analyze general and specific requirements.

Brainstorming

An informal debate is held among various stakeholders and all their inputs are recorded for further requirements analysis.

Prototyping

Prototyping is building user interface without adding detail functionality for user to interpret the features of intended software product. It helps giving better idea of requirements. If there is no software installed at client’s end for developer’s reference and the client is not aware of its own requirements, the developer creates a prototype based on initially mentioned requirements. The prototype is shown to the client and the feedback is noted. The client feedback serves as an input for requirement gathering.

Observation

Team of experts visit the client’s organization or workplace. They observe the actual working of the existing installed systems. They observe the workflow at client’s end and how execution problems are dealt. The team itself draws some conclusions which aid to form requirements expected from the software.

Prototyping

Prototypes can be very effective at gathering feedback. Low fidelity prototypes can be used as an active listening tool. Often, when people can not articulate a particular need in the abstract, they can quickly assess if a design approach would address the need. Prototypes are most efficiently done with quick sketches of interfaces and storyboards. Prototypes are even being used as the “official requirements” in some situations.

Software Requirements Characteristics

Gathering software requirements is the foundation of the entire software development project. Hence they must be clear, correct and well-defined.

Are your current revenue streams plateauing? Are you looking to build additional revenue streams Have you reached highest revenue limits with your current clients looking to build an additional revenue stream?

In a world full of continuing business uncertainty and tough economic challenges, what would you give for a predictable, growing revenue stream that creates loyal customers and helps sell product?

Are you a Business looking to bring your business into the Digital Era?

Do you want to digitize your services to provide increased and additional revenue stream?

If any of these questions keep you up at night as a business owner or CEO then talk to us as Edel Technology Consulting.

EDEL Technology Consulting was built on the tenet: organizations all over the world need to align strategy and technology to ensure that they survive, innovate and beat their competition.

Let us a give you a quick example

Case Study

Setting the Scene

A legal firm (RF and Partners) have being in business for the last 10 years. They serve small to medium size companies and have being successful so far. RF and Partners have noticed that they have stagnated in terms of profits and unless a the company strategically transforms itself and come up with innovative products, the RF and Partners might be gradually heading to closure as they might not be able maintain the current cost of running the firm – an indication from their financial projections..

EDEL Technology Consulting is contracted to bring synergies in strategy and technology to enable RF and Partners’ growth.

Phase 1

Strategy and alignment meeting

EDEL Technology Consulting’s initially setup strategy sessions with the RF and Partners’ team to understand their business and by so doing establish key points:

Unmet needs of customer

What strategies to employ to address them

The evolution of the market or industry, and strategies to adopt to remain relevant to industry evolutions

These questions help define strategies and direction of RF and Partners and how EDEL Technology Consulting can align technology to new revenue channels, revised products or redefinition of business models.

Phase 2

Design Workshop

Design thinking process first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user demographic at the core of concept development. This process focuses on need finding, understanding, creating, thinking, and doing. At the core of this process is a bias towards action and creation: by creating and testing something, you can continue to learn and improve upon your initial ideas.

In the Design thinking workshop a problem space emerged

Problem Space

There was class of SME’s that RF & Partners were not serving and these were startups and individuals who need quick simple legal services without having to pay huge retainer fees.

Worldwide, there are about 300 million persons trying to start about 150 million businesses. About one third will be launched, so you can assume 50 million new firm births per year. Or about 137,000 per day. As firm birth and death rates are about equal, the same number of active firms, say 120,000 probably terminate trading each day–world wide

These startups cannot afford the high legal fees or retention costs charged by the traditional firms, but are still in need of legal services

There were a large number of solution s to offer services to these client in way the was price sensitive and yet provided RF and Partners good margins.

Solution One

On demand Online Platform in which startups would enter and answer a number of questions and a set of tailored documents would be generated automatically. There would be little human intervention and startup would be able to access template legal documents at on demand price.

We create a prototype to test viability of product (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform?)

We quickly put together a one page Google form. ( it takes 10 minutes to create)

In the Form we included a mobile money number to which amount was to be paid (clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)

On receipt of payment paralegal with supervision of second year lawyer would compile legal document startup needs to preset template

We market the product through online mediums

(We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.

How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors

The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms

Solution Two

On demand service in which organization who can request, an online conference with a legal practitioner and pay for a set time .In that time legal practitioner and can review and give advice. The user can pay based on experience and seniority of legal practioner.

How do we create a prototype (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform)

We create a landing page for users to request the service ( request can be done via landing page or the via email)

The user can pay for service using mobile money ( clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)

On receipt of payment paralegal schedules a Skype call with user for the time paid for with Lawyer

We market the product through online/sms marketing

(We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.

How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors

The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms

At the end of the month the revenue generated and feedback from client who bought the service is used to make the decision on digital product to build for RF & Partners.

We build Digital Product

Create Product go to market strategy

Choreograph product launch

EDEL Technology Consulting has provided RF Partners a digitized service that will increase revenue flow year on year 20%.